Rose's Choice
by ImaginaryHomeforFriends
Summary: Rose is on a space station with the tenth regeneration of the Doctor when it all goes a little sideways. No, actually, she's still just travelling with the ninth regeneration of the Doctor with Jack while having dreams of a man in a trench coat. Which reality will she choose?


"_So this is a space station?' Rose asked dubiously, eyeing the long corridor full of doors. She didn't feel the ship vibrating under her feet and couldn't hear the soft hum. She had been on several space ships and stations, enough to know how to tell the difference and to feel something was off about this place._

_ "Yeahhh…" The Doctor stretched the word and tugged on his ear, and Rose knew he had an unusual feeling also. Rose held out her hand and wiggled her fingers in a good imitation of him._

_ "Well there's someone here who sent out a distress beacon so we best find them and help them out, yeah?" The Doctor beamed at her and took her outstretched hand, lacing his fingers with hers._

_ "Don't wander off," The Doctor said seriously. Rose knew that he'd never come out and say he was worried and this was his way of showing just how much he didn't trust this place. The Doctor had long ago stopped telling her to not go wandering off. Not since he was wearing a leather jacket instead of a trench coat._

_ "I'll try," The Doctor's brown eyes landed on her, about to give her a stern talking-to but he was met by her cheeky grin and he couldn't help but return the look._

_ "Come on then Rose Tyler," He put emphasis on her last name, something new he did in this regeneration. It was like a soft reply to the way she said 'Doc-tah'. "Things to do, people to save." They began walking down the long corridor._

_ "A creepy space station to explore," Rose and the Doctor laughed, the sound echoing eerily in the empty corridors but the Doctor and Rose were far too lost in their own bubble of happiness to notice._

Rose woke up with a start, a dream rapidly disappearing from her mind as she wiped the sleep out of her eyes and yawned so loudly her jaw cracked. She felt an urgency for something, but she couldn't quite pinpoint what. Something about a distress and a trench coat? Rose tried to remember her dream but it was slipping away quickly and it only seemed to get her a headache concentrating on it so she let it go. What she needed was a cuppa and a new adventure and she'd feel perfectly better.

Rose rolled out of her bed before half-walking, half-stumbling out of her room. Her room on the TARDIS which already felt like home.

"Ah, you're finally up." The Doctor said happily as Rose somehow made her way into the kitchen. Probably more help with from the TARDIS than anything, she was always quite useless in the mornings. The Doctor and Jack had pulled out the refrigerator and the wall behind it to get to all the wires there. Jack was standing on a chair, half his body in the wall. "You apes waste so much time sleeping." The Doctor said, as if to off-set his happy announcement that she was up. Rose heard Jack's deep chuckle that echoed inside the wall.

The Doctor had shucked off his jacket somewhere, and his jumpers sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He was using a particularly dirty rag to wipe something black off of his hands, though he had yet to notice he had somehow smeared it on the left side of his jaw.

"Mornin'." Rose didn't know why her voice sounded so small or why her eyes suddenly filled with tears at the sight of the two men mucking about with the TARDIS, which was a familiar sight but it felt _off_, like she hadn't seen it in a long time.

"Rose?" The Doctor was in front of her, tilting her face up to get a good look at her. Checking her eyes and then feeling along her throat. After assessing that it wasn't a physical sickness that was ailing her he looked her full in the eyes. His eyes were brown- no, blue, why did she think they were brown? The Doctor's eyes were as blue as they could get.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," Rose said, feeling young and foolish but also suddenly terrified. She rubbed at her face, trying to get her treacherous heart to slow down but it seemed like it wanted to hammer right out of her chest.

"What's wrong Rosie?" Oh and now she had Jack worried. She gripped the sleeve of the Doctors jacket, holding it in a tight grip though she wasn't sure why.

"Rose, sit down." The Doctor said in a commanding voice, settling her into one of the yellow kitchen chairs that looked old and somehow felt so comfortable. "Tell me what's wrong." Rose tightly clenched her eyes shut and pressed her face into his shoulder.

_"Doctor, what is this place? What's goin' on? Where is everyone?" Rose asked, her panic mounting as the Doctor tried to sonic open yet another door. The lights down the corridor were steadily going on and she did not want to be left in complete darkness. A slow, creeping feeling of unease and pure, stark terror was crawling over her body. She had only gotten this feeling a couple times when the Doctor and her had gotten into some really bad situations, and she knew to listen to her instincts._

_ "The distress call was a trap, they send it out and when people come to help out they get caught up." The Doctor moved onto another door, sonicing it as another light flickered out and then he slammed his shoulder into it. Rose felt utterly useless and she began to blindly twist doorknobs. "Then when they show up-"_

_ "Doctor I got-"_

_ "No! Rose no!"_

Rose woke up surrounded by flowers, which was a bit odd but not the weirdest place she's found herself waking up in since travelling with the Doctor. She leaned on her elbows, looking around at the large field of flowers in every color imaginable before she pushed herself up to her feet.

Something was off, something chewing at the back of her brain, crawling and scratching to get out. A distant scream that she couldn't hear which direction it was coming from and she suddenly felt like retching.

"Rose! There you are, wandered off again, have ya?" The Doctor was strolling over to her, his dark clothes a stark contrast against all the flowers. "Jack and I 'ave been lookin' all over for ya, we 'ave." He stopped to stand in front of her and Rose frowned up at him, watching as his wide smile slowly disappeared.

"Weren't we just on the TARDIS?" Rose asked, her brow creasing in confusion, feeling like someone had hit her upside the head with a cricket bat. The Doctor hooked a finger under her chin and tilted his head as he examined her face before glancing around at the flowers.

"Rose, what 'ave I told you about sniffin' the local wildlife?" Rose scrunched up her face at the Doctor, feeling the horrid sensation she had woken up with slowly ebbing away with the Doctor this close.

"I fell asleep," Rose stated simply before grabbing his hand to lace their fingers together and pull him in the direction that he had walked from.

"You fell asleep?" The Doctor asked uncertainly before letting out a bark of laughter. "Oh that's just so you, Jack and I are runnin' around like a Griphook-"

"Griphook? Isn't that a Harry Potter character?" Rose asked in amusement.

"Without his- hold up, a what character?"

"Harry Potter, you know, the boy who lived?" Rose looked up at him and then laughed. "Don't tell me, over 900 years old with all of time and space at your fingertips and you've never read Harry Potter? What sort of spaceman are you?"

"What's that suppose to mean? Can't expect me to read everything-"

"Doctor, it's Harry Potter! I'm not even a great reader and I've read it! That great big library and you said you've read every book in there at least twice-"

"Because I 'ave-"

"And you haven't read Harry Potter?" Rose's laughter was cut short as she suddenly collapsed, the feeling of strong arms around her disappearing quickly.

_Her fists were pounding against a wall, a wall where a door was but now there was nothing. She screamed and pounded more, her fists felt raw and bruised but she continued on because she could hear the Doctor on the other side, doing the same._

_ "Rose! Listen to me Rose, please, quickly before it changes."_ _Rose stopped her pounding and pressed her ear against the door to hear the Doctor better. Her heart pounded within her chest, and her breath was coming in quick shallow gasps but she put all her focus on listening to him, even as something cool and misty swirled around her feet. "The race that controls this space station isn't very strong, not strong at all, physically at least. So they trick people into coming here, and trick them into the rooms where they drug them, give them the one thing they want most in the world because they want you to stay drugged. The drug won't work if you fight it Rose, please fight it with everything you have, I know you can. I will find you, I promise you Rose Tyler, I will find you! But you have to fight it!"_

_ "What happens if I can't Doctor, what happens when the drug takes effect?" Rose asked urgently, the mist twisting up her cafes and to her knees now._

_ "You can! You are the strongest person I know and you can do this-"_

_ "Doctor!" Rose cried, holding back her tears._

_ "You'll be lost forever, they'll use you as- as fuel for their ships." The Doctor finally admitted. "Stay strong Rose, please, I will find you, I promise." The mist was curling around her torso, working it's way steadily up and Rose took a deep, steadying breath. She turned towards the empty room, leaning her back against the wall and tilted her head up in defiance._

Rose woke up in a bed. Not her bed back home in her mums flat in London, or even her own bed on the TARDIS. No, she was laying on black sheets with a dark gray comforter tucked around her body. There were all sorts of doo-dads and what-nots covering every spare inch of the room and she knew instantly that this could be no one else's room besides the Doctors.

"I keep passin' out and wakin' up in different places." Rose said, feeling a strange sense of calm that made her drowsy. She was full dressed under the blanket, and so was the Doctor who sat across the room at a chair.

"Something's happenin' but I'm workin' on how to fix it," The Doctor promised, his blue eyes staying steady on hers.

"So's the other Doctor, the real one." Rose immediately regretted her words as she saw the hurt flash across his face but he immediately covered it up and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his denim covered knees. "You regenerated, and this is- this is a drug, I'm bein' drugged, they're showing me what I want most so I'll give into the drug." Rose said, though slightly uncertain and even though she was half-sure she was in some drug-induced dream she still looked at the Doctor for the answer.

"How do you know this isn't the real world?" The Doctor asked.

"Could be, it's rather pathetic isn't it?" Rose stretched languidly in a bed that wasn't her, in a bed she hadn't actually ever seen. "The thing I want most is just to be with you, not even truly with you but just- just like we always were." She turned her head to watch as the Doctor walked over to the bed. She had nearly forgotten how this Doctor walked, like a panther, all caged power and like a soldier. He sat on the edge of the bed and pushed aside a strand of her hair.

"How's that pathetic?" The Doctor asked, his ancient eyes staring down at her. "What if the other world is what you want? A prettier version of me." The Doctor cracked a grin at her.

_"Rose please, fight it!"_

Rose was sitting up, her body pressed against the Doctor, his jumper soft against her bare arms and his leather jacket a comfort as he wrapped his arms around her.

"You don't 'ave to go." The Doctor offered in her ear, and this felt like the toughest decision she ever had to make. Because wasn't it just so like the Doctor to give her the option, never forcing her into one situation or another.

"'m scared Doctor, what if I pick the wrong world?" Rose mumbled against his chest.

_"Oh no you don't Rose Tyler, you come back to me."_

"You could stay with me," The Doctor said, his voice sounding more strained than it did before. "Travels in time and space you know? Go wherever, your choice."

_"Please Rose! Stay with me."_

"Stay with me."

Rose clenched her eyes shut and put all her concentration, all her will and heart and soul into one world, hoping it was the right choice.


End file.
